Fallout from 2014 FiftyFifty Eclipse Party (With Comments from The Brewery)

(Truckee,CA) – Over the past few years, there has been a rise of a new sub culture in craft beer enthusiasm which involves buying rare, brewery released only, low bottle count beers for the purpose of landing a one sided trade or selling on the black market.  The term often used is muling, in which an opportunist will band together with friends to game the system of a bottle limit per person. For example, if the bottle release is limit 3, you might bring with you 5 other people that might not particularly care about the beer to stand in line with you. You hand them your money, and you end up with 18 bottles instead of 3. Many breweries have caught on to these shenanigans, and have curtailed this by making people pre-pay for bottles online, limiting it to those who can physically pick up the bottles. Companies like AleSmith and Lost Abbey have greatly limited negative issues by going this route.

Unfortunately, our friends FiftyFifty Brewing up in Truckee, CA had not been following along over the past few years of this game, and were the latest victims.  Every year for the past 6 years, FiftyFifty holds their Eclipse Imperial Stout party, in which many Californians travel up to Truckee to taste all the different barreled variants of the stout, get the opportunity to purchase some bottles, and are offered a few Eclipse products that do not make it to distribution.  Each year, it is a ticketed event, so there is no surprise as to how many people will be arriving on FiftyFifty’s end.

Where things got squirrelly is when FiftyFifty sent out a memo the day before the event that they would be releasing an uberduber rare variation called Masterpiece Eclipse and there would be NO BOTTLE LIMIT. Word is there was only 400 bottles.  The lightbulb immediately went on in many opportunists heads and you can probably guess where this is going.

By next morning, Facebook and BeerAdvocate were both flooded with unhappy attendees. Unhappy because either they didn’t get a crack at Masterpiece Eclipse or that they were trying to have a good time and were stuck in the middle of a shit show.

Anyway, here are some comments from Alicia Barr over at FiftyFifty Brewing. It’s my opinion that they have learned about the uglier aspect of rare beer and will make sure this doesn’t happen again.

“This new trend of people muling for so many others, essentially a secondary resale market, was something that we had no idea about the magnitude of.  Perhaps it’s because we’re country bumpkins locked away in our snowy mountains.  🙂  For other styles in the past, a “large” order was on a completely different scale of anything that happened this year.  The beer consumer culture is evolving at a rapid pace, and this caught us by surprise.  By the time management realized what was happening, the bed had been made and there was no going back.  Now that we are aware, this something we will obviously address in the future.”

Even though Masterpiece sold our fairly quickly, there were still 11 variants of 2014 Eclipse that were available and being sold all night.  We have some amazing variants this year, including rare Evan Williams 23-yr whiskey (a whiskey product only available in Japan), 30-yr Spanish Rum barrels, High West Single Malt, and many more.  There was plenty for everyone.

There is also some chatter about feeling gipped on the ticket price because some people were unable to purchase a specific bottle.  The ticket and party experience was never about that.  It’s about the basically unlimited pouring of barrel aged FiftyFifty products for 6+ hours: current Eclipse, vintage Eclipse, plus other barrel aged products that you will never see outside of our pub, and specifically outside of this party.  It’s about gourmet food pouring out of the kitchen all night: charcuterie, artisanal cheese, phyllo wrapped asparagus, skewered bbq shrimp, rosemary infused Eclipse smoked filet over polenta, and even pizza for the late night munchies.  It’s about the exclusive commemorative bottle that every ticket holder gets to take home, along with the commemorative tasting glass.  Most importantly it’s about hanging out with people who share you’re passion of beer, eating, drinking and being merry.  The ticket has never been, nor ever will be, about buying bottles.  Specifically this year, at the risk of being repetitive, Masterpiece didn’t even exist until the day before the party.  To be honest, it still leaves us a bit confused as to the intensity of the reaction.

The bottom line is we do care.  Deeply.  As does all of our staff.  I’d like to think that those who know us and have grown with us over the years know that, and know that the integrity of the party hasn’t changed.  I would bet that most people who are unhappy about how it went down aren’t losing sleep over it.  We are.  We are already discussing how to make sure we promote sense of beer gathering for everyone next year and create the right dynamic.  Most people still had a great time this year, and I am very grateful for all of the emails we have received in support and thanking us for another great party.  We would like to make the experience that way for everyone.  We have listened and learned in the past, and will continue to do so in the future.  We don’t want anyone to have to wait in line for anything at the party.  Obviously there was a new factor this year, and we will most certainly address that for next year.  In the meantime, we are just looking forward to getting back to the brewery to make more amazing beer to share with everyone.”